ViPR Blog

If I had one wish, it would be to travel back in time and live inside the creative mind of a child. Can you imagine what this would be like? Can you imagine finding joy and excitement in a stick and/or a large puddle…How awesome would it be to visualize a sword and a huge river instead?

I have been blessed with two sets of twins. My boys are six and my girls will be two in December. I have always had a passion for movement and have taught my kids from an early age of its benefits. They have watched me work with clients and train on my own their whole lives. Every day my kids and I move together in some way.

One of our usual routines is a four-mile adventure that takes us around the neighborhood. The boys ride their bikes and I pull the girls in the wagon. The other day we were on our ride and my son, William, said, "Mommy, don't step on the blue laser beams they will turn you into ice." (The town had marked colored lines on the road for utilities and he saw them as lasers.)

What if we could combine that creativity into a structured activity? What if there was a tool that would both challenge kids and help them successfully improve their function? I found that in ViPR™.

ViPR can be dragged, rolled, kicked, carried, hopped over and tilted. There are endless variations that can be coupled with a fun story to create an adventure of movement. Use your environment and tweak the challenge.

Obstacle courses are a great way to integrate ViPR for kids! Break it up with other fun tools such as big wheels, hula hoops, balls or frisbees, and then add the creativity of a story. The biggest thing to remember is that perfect form is not the goal here. The goal is fun, laughter and fostering a love for movement. Kids get it! The new 2kg tool will allow kids to take full advantage of ViPR. It has the same great benefits as the full-size models … it can be thrown, rolled, lifted and shifted, but its smaller size will allow kids to carry it with ease. They will have greater success with the higher-level patterns including reaches, jumps and kid-friendly flows. It’s an exciting new tool that is the perfect size for our little ones.

There is nothing better than helping a child use their body and grow strong. Now go out and play! :)

My Kids Workout…

In the photo below, we set out five seashells along the beach and the boys chose a movement for each shell. At the end of the five shells there were three ViPR tools. We ran to the shell, did five reps of the movement and then on to the next one. Then you picked up the ViPR tool and ran back to the same shells and repeated the movement with load. Our goal was three rounds before the tide came in. It was great fun and it held the boys’ attention for about 15 minutes of structured play.